THIS revival of Sue Glover's play was abducted from Fifth Estate's
programme for the Edinburgh Festival through circumstances beyond the
company's control, and it is happily restored in this re-cast and
re-directed version.
Abduction is one of the themes of The Straw Chair. As a consequence of
political machination, missionary calling, domestic duty or fate, each
of the four characters in the piece has been brought to a state of both
physical and metaphysical exile on the island of St Kilda. This is the
eighteenth century, and conditions are as extreme as the geographical
isolation. A lot of tears fall into the water pot.
It is an environment without superfluities in which polarities of
existence clash. The central antagonism is between the rigidities of
Christian piety and humanitarian compassion, and if the minister (Allan
Sharpe) finally finds his bridge between the two, the gulf that exists
throughout between fallen men and abandoned women is never fully closed.
All that unites them is a prevailing sexual repression, and the
coalescence of men and women remains stunted.
I find it too bleak a vision of Calvinist austerity, with a final
optimism that is facile and inconclusive. The compensation in the
production lies in the fine playing of Anne Lacey, Pauline Lockhart and
Donalda Samuel, who create moments which remind us of Glover's best
writing in Bondagers. But the gap of a month between this and its
intended companion piece, Donald Campbell's The Ould Fella, is a
blessing.
Separation has permitted a period of recovery and relief from two
visions of gloom. I for one have had too much of this wallowing
depression presented as The Scottish Condition and I become impatient
with the cold introversion that perpetuates it.
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